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The knife gleamed overhead. In desperation, he threw up his legs and thrust both feet into Everett’s chest, flinging him backward.
Everett staggered, flailing back across the room, half-caught himself, then froze abruptly. The expression on his face showed vast surprise. His hand loosened, dropping the knife, and then drew slowly through the air, graceful in gesture as the dancer that he was. His fingers touched the reddened steel protruding from his chest, acknowledging defeat. He slumped slowly to the floor.
Harry Quarry put a foot on Everett’s back and freed his sword with a vicious yank.
“Good job I waited, wasn’t it? Saw those buggers with their lanterns and all, and thought best I see what mischief was afoot.”
“Mischief,” Grey echoed. He stood up, or tried to. His knees had gone to water. “You…did you hear?” His heart was beating very slowly; he wondered in a dreamy way whether it might stop any minute.
Quarry glanced at him, expression unreadable.
“I heard.” He wiped his sword, then sheathed it, and came to the bed, bending down to peer at Grey. How much had he heard, Grey wondered—and what had he made of it?
A rough hand brushed back his hair. He felt the stiffness matting it, and thought of Robert Gerald’s mother.
“It’s not my blood,” he said.
“Some of it is,” said Quarry, and traced a line down the side of his neck. In the wake of the touch, he felt the sting of the cut, u
“Never fear,” said Quarry, and gave him a hand to get up. “It will make a pretty scar.”
“Lord John and the Succubus”
In 2003, I was invited to write a novella for an anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, titled Legends II: New Short Novels by the Modern Masters of Fantasy.I had slight reservations—as my World of War Craft–playing son asked, seeing the contract, “Since when are you a modern master of fantasy, Mom?”—but(a) was very flattered to be asked to share a volume with George R. R. Martin, Terry Brooks, and Orson Scott Card, and(b) I’m inclined to regard the notion of literary genres in the same light as a Chinese menu, and (c) if I had a family motto, it would probably be “Why not?” (the accompanying coat-of-arms being a stone circle quartered on a field of azure and crimson with rampant hippogriffs). So I did.
However, I had the same concerns regarding the main characters of the Outlander books that obtained when I wrote “Hellfire.” Reflecting that it had worked once, so why not?, I decided to call Lord John into active duty once more.
The difficulty being, of course, that Lord John Grey is not a time-traveler, nor yet a telepath, a shape-shifter, nor even an inhabitant of an alternate universe loosely based on the history and culture of Scotland or Turkestan. But, on the other hand, there was no requirement that the main character of this putative novella be himself a creature of fantasy—and a story in which a perfectly normal (well, more or less) hero comes into conflict with supernatural creatures is a solid archetype. Hey, if it was good enough for Homer, it’s good enough for me.
And so, “Lord John and the Succubus” was published in 2004, as part of the Legends IIanthology. In terms of Lord John’s chronology, this story follows the novel, Lord John and the Private Matter,and in it, we renew our acquaintance with Tom Byrd, Lord John’s valet, and his friend, Stephan von Namtzen. Set in Germany (which didn’t actually exist as a political entity at the time, but was a recognizable geographical region) in the early phases of the Seven Years War, “Succubus” is a supernatural murder mystery, with military flourishes.
Historical note: Between 1756 and 1763, Great Britain joined with her allies, Prussia and Hanover, to fight against the mingled forces of Austria, Saxony—and England’s ancient foe, France. In the autumn of 1757, the Duke of Cumberland was obliged to surrender at Kloster-Zeven, leaving the allied armies temporarily shattered and the forces of Frederick the Great of Prussia and his English allies encircled by French and Austrian troops.
Chapter 1
Death Rides a Pale Horse
Grey’s spoken German was improving by leaps and bounds, but found itself barely equal to the present task.
After a long, boring day of rain and paperwork, there had come the sound of loud dispute in the corridor outside his office, and the head of Lance-Korporal Helwig appeared in his doorway, wearing an apologetic expression.
“Major Grey?” he said “Ich habe ein kleines Englische problem.”
A moment later, Lance-Korporal Helwig had disappeared down the corridor like an eel sliding into mud, and Major John Grey, English liaison to the Imperial Fifth Regiment of Hanoverian Foot, found himself adjudicating a three-way dispute among an English private, a gypsy prostitute, and a Prussian tavern owner.
A little English problem,Helwig had described it as. The problem, as Grey saw it, was rather the lackof English.
The tavern owner spoke the local dialect with such fluency and speed that Grey grasped no more than one word in ten. The English private, who normally probably knew no more German than “ja,” “nein,”and the two or three crude phrases necessary to accomplish immoral transactions, was so stricken with fury that he was all but speechless in his own tongue, as well.
The gypsy, whose abundant charms were scarcely impaired by a missing tooth, had German that most nearly matched Grey’s own in terms of grammar—though her vocabulary was immensely more colorful and detailed.
Using alternate hands to quell the sputterings of the private and the torrents of the Prussian, Grey concentrated his attention carefully on the gypsy’s explanations—meanwhile taking care to consider the source, which meant discounting the factual basis of most of what she said.
“…and then the disgusting pig of an Englishman, he put his [incomprehensible colloquial expression] into my [unknown gypsy word]! And then…”
“She said, she said she’d do it for sixpence, sir! She did, she said so—but, but, but, then…”
“These-barbarian-pig-dogs-did-revolting-things-under-the-table-and-made-it-fall-over-so-the-leg-of-the-table-was-brokenand-the-dishes-broken-too-even-my-large-platter-which-cost-six- thalers-at-St.Martin’s-Fair-and-the-meat-was-ruined-by-falling-onthe-floor-and-even-if-it-was-not-the-dogs-fell-upon-it-snarlingso-that-I-was-bitten-when-I-tried-to-seize-it-away-from-them-andall-the-time-these-vile-persons-were-copulating-like-filthy-foxeson-the-floor-and-THEN…”
At length, an accommodation was reached, by means of Grey’s demanding that all three parties produce what money was presently in their possession. A certain amount of shifty-eyed reluctance and dramatic pantomimes of purse and pocket-searching having resulted in three small heaps of silver and copper, he firmly rearranged these in terms of size and metal value, without reference as to the actual coinage involved, as these appeared to include the currency of at least six different principalities.
Eyeing the gypsy’s ensemble, which included both gold earrings and a crude but broad gold band round her finger, he assigned roughly equitable heaps to her and to the private, whose name, when asked, proved to be Bodger.
Assigning a slightly larger heap to the tavern owner, he then scowled fiercely at the three combatants, jabbed a finger at the money, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating that they should take the coins and leave while he was still in possession of his temper.